


Landslide

by hydianway



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Young Avengers
Genre: Colours, F/F, Fluff, LA (ask me for the truth about it), Mild Angst, New York (tell me how you feel about it), Seasons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-03
Updated: 2015-03-03
Packaged: 2018-03-15 18:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3458000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydianway/pseuds/hydianway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate and America: three seasons on two coasts, a return and a separation and another return, colours, cooking lessons, stars, kissing, and by the end it all adds up to some kind of love story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Landslide

**Author's Note:**

> i'm not american, and i apologise if that's immediately obvious, but suggestions/corrections are very welcome.
> 
>  
> 
> [tiny little bows-- carly rae jepsen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ckSZ00zedY)  
> [landslide-- fleetwood mac](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xW2taEoH6s)

 

* * *

 

 **Chapter One:**   **Summer, California**

 

The water is very blue, and the sky pale and free of clouds. Kate laughs at Lucky as he growls at the waves, running from the hissing white foam as it rushes up the sand, and America smiles at her in return, throwing a pale stick of driftwood down the beach for the dog to chase. 

The scene is beautiful; in every aspect the perfect California day, and Kate almost has to stop herself from laughing out loud at the pure fantasy of it, only it's real life and she could hardly be less uncomplicatedly happy about it. 

America had turned up the door of Kate’s trailer just the night before, dirty and only very slightly scraped-up, her red white and blue jacket with a new tear at its elbow. Right now on the beach, she’s got a needle and thread in her hand and her tongue between her teeth, squinting down at her lap to stitch it up.

Her dark hair’s catching the sunlight, diffusing off her curls and making dancing patterns as she ducks down to look more closely at what she’s doing.

America is very beautiful, Kate thinks. She hasn’t forgotten, but remembering is different to the actual sight of her, tan and grinning inside her trailer, on her little patch of beach, somehow, miraculously, having leapt right back into her life 

She definitely wasn’t wrong about the not-that-straight bit either, but Kate’s finding it hard to mind too much anymore, now she’s well shot of the initial panic, the crisis of identity that’d sent her into such a tailspin.

And it’s hard to care about anything when it’s this hot, and the sun’s just that bright behind her, and America’s sitting next to her, legs brown and strong and stretched out on the sand only a few feet away.

 

* * *

 

“So where were you?” asks Kate at dinner. It’s baked beans on toast, which isn’t much good but is at least edible which is more than can be said for any of the times she’s tried to cook something more ambitious. “I’d thought I’d never see you again.” 

America shrugs.

“Around,” she says, trying hard for nonchalant and coming very close getting there. Kate can hear only the barest traces of a careful note in her voice, but she smiles gently at the realisation that America isn’t quite so unflappable as she seems. “You know how it is.”

America takes a mouthful of beans and frowns a bit, then tries to speak through them. It comes out all muffled. She swallows with what looks like some difficulty, and tries again.

“And I wouldn’t not visit, princess, I’d miss out on all this fantastic cooking."

Kate snorts, and rolls her eyes. _My cooking’s fine_ , she wants to say, automatically on the defensive. After a moment's consideration, she settles for: “It hasn’t killed anyone yet, at least."

“But you’ve been the only one eating it,” says America, smirking at her. “That doesn’t prove anything.” 

America pauses, looking down to arrange her cutlery neatly on the plate with chipped edges that Kate found at the back of the cupboard. She really hasn’t had company living all the way out here if she’s not needed to find an extra plate in nearly a month and a half. 

“I can teach you, if you like. I know a thing or two about cooking. And a lot of other things as well, but right now you mostly need to know about the cooking, I reckon.” 

She pushes her plate away from her and leans back in her chair, stretching her arms out behind her. Kate never really noticed it on Noh-Varr’s ship, but America seems much taller in the contained inside spaces of the trailer: she has to duck to get in the doorway, and her arms like this nearly stretch back to touch the back wall.

Kate smiles, and pushes her mostly empty plate way from her, wondering if Lucky will finish it off for her. She doesn't like to waste food now she has to pay for it all. “I would like,” she says. “There’s only so far a girl can go on canned stuff and Kraft mac ’n cheese, and I think I got there a few weeks ago.”

On Noh-Varr’s ship, though, maybe she just wasn’t always so much aware of America’s presence, her body, as she is now. It’s a little overwhelming, this feeling of always having to know where America sits, how she stands, how the light falls on her face, something she’s not quite familiar with yet. 

They do the dishes, and Kate pulls out the spare blanket she found in one of the drawers for America to sleep under. It’s slightly dusty, and by the looks of things it was crocheted by someone’s grandma in the ‘70s, back when anyone still thought brown and lime green was a winning color combination.

America laughs when she sees it, and goes to shake out the dust just outside, before they go to lie stiffly side-by-side on the mattress at the back of Kate’s trailer that could just about pass for a double bed if you squinted, and weren’t too worried about your personal space. 

Kate isn’t, as a rule, but America seems to be breaking all of those anyway, and even though she’s cramped and uncomfortable in the bed, and America teased her about her cooking, Kate’s still the most content she’s been since leaving New York. Before even, maybe.  

 

* * *

The next day, America starts to teach her how to cook. They go to the market in the morning, a ragtag collection of stalls, some shaded, some left to the mercy of the Southern California sun, and America drags her and Lucky around half the fruit and vegetable vendors, inspecting the goods and on one occasion arguing with the proprietor of a stall in rapid-fire Spanish over the cost of tomatoes. 

Kate lets herself be dragged, enjoying the hot sun beating down on her and the rough, friendly noise of the market, America’s firm grip on her wrist. It all feels very domestic.

Kate thinks she might like that.

They take the food back to the trailer on the beach, piling up the bags on the tiny kitchen table and smiling at how it all looks laid out, the bright colours of the fruit and vegetables a welcome change from the bland, processed look of whatever Kate normally eats. 

Kate pulls America down to the beach, right down to the edge of the water where the waves rush to eat up the sand and recede just as quickly, tugging at your ankles and trying to pull you in. Lucky barks at the foam. Kate and America laugh. 

Later, after they've dragged themselves away from he beach and tied Lucky up outside, America is comically enraged over Kate’s lack of cooking equipment. 

“Dios mio," America says, and rolls her eyes. "No wonder you can’t cook.' She laughs and shakes her head. Her curls bounce around her shoulders, and Kate has to fight to stay focused, not to think about how it’d feel to run her fingers through America’s hair, to push it back behind her ears in the most intimate way, or how close she is behind her in the limited space in front of the tiny bench. 

In the end, America manages to dig up enough pots and pans for them to get by, and Kate proves herself to be only about half as much of a disaster at cooking as she’d thought she’d be. 

Dinner that night is eaten on the roof, the two of them sitting side by side on towels to cover the hot metal, watching the sunset fading from the brightest, most blinding orange, down and out over the horizon. They sit in silence, both of them pretending not to be watching the other, until the sun’s comepletely gone and they can barely see what’s ten feet in front of them. 

 

* * * 

 

Afterwards, they’re doing the dishes, just like last night and the morning before, suddenly Kate’s just— face to face with America, bodies pressed close and both reaching for something on the opposite ends of the tiny bench.

She pauses, considering the proximity, and the way America looks when she’s surprised, the widening of her eyes and the way her lips are held very slightly apart. There’s a lock of hair falling down her forehead, and Kate thinks she’s never looked more beautiful. 

_Fuck it_ , Kate thinks, and stands up on tip toes to kiss her.

 

* * * 

 

The next few weeks, it feels like they're never more than a few inches from each other, like, having been given permission to touch, to look at will, neither is willing to give up the privilege for any longer than absolutely necessary. They still go down to the beach most days, watching Lucky in the water and throwing sticks, and they kiss languidly on the sand, laughing at the grit in their hair and their clothes at the end of the day.

They go back to the market on the Saturday, wander around in the backstreets of Los Angeles for an afternoon, solve one of Kate's cases in two days and sleep too late in the mornings because they're always up half the night, talking as often as kissing, but not much more than that, for the first few weeks at least. There's a strange kind of hesitance, tentative and warm, like Kate knows she could get lost in America's skin and her mouth and breath, but she's not yet sure how much control she can lose--how much she  _wants_ to lose--and she thinks she'd rather just take it slowly till she can't anymore.

Then it's just _there_ one night, both of them humid and hot inside the trailer, the warm yellow lamplight on their bodies making it look like they glow. S kin on bone, breath on bitten lips, heat and hands and bodies. 

Desire, friction, clothes lying discarded on the floor.

Kate never wants it to stop.  S he's no stranger to sex, to wanting to know someone's body better than your own, tasting the salt off their skin and burning bright with the need to bring them as close into you as possible, the chemical power of movement and touch, but America is intoxicating, especially. 

On days when they're still in bed when the sunlight starts streaming onto the mattress, when they're lying on the beach, when America's just punched some dodgy looking guy in a back alley somewhere, whenever America smiles in that particular way of hers and calls her princess, Kate finds herself wishing she could draw, because photos don't have the same quality that she thinks she could get in a sketch, the roughness and the warmth of an actual person beside her, the heat of the sun making everything feel blurred and hazy.  

America has to do most of the cooking, and the bed's still too small, but it matters less than it ever did.  

One night in July Kate finds America sitting on top of the trailer, staring up at the stars. Pensive lines are etched into her face, but the sombre expression vanishes as soon as she realises Kate can see her. 

"Hey," she says with a smirk and a very obvious once over. "The stars are good tonight, aren't they?"

"Mm," says Kate, stepping forward to drape her arms over her shoulders and kiss her.

"You know any constellations?" she asks, when they break apart. "I'm no good with astronomy."

America laughs, and points to a line of three very bright stars all in a row. "We'll start with the easy ones, then. Those three stars there, that's Orion's belt."

Later in bed, when she thinks Kate's not looking, the pensive look is back. 

Kate doesn't think twice about it. They're very happy, after all.

 

* * *

 

One morning, Kate wakes up to an empty space next to her and a note on the table.

_     Princess _ — it says,

_     Sorry to leave you like this, but things to do, people to punch. You know how it is. _

_     I’ll catch up with you, _

_     America _

She was expecting it, somewhere deep down in a little-used corner of her mind, but she’s not expecting how cold it makes her feel, the creeping loneliness of being hundreds of miles away from anyone she knows and having absolutely know idea what she’s supposed to be doing. 

"Guess it's just you and me then, Lucky," she says. Lucky's tail thumps dully on the floor. 

At least Lucky won't go away. 

 

* * *

 

****Chapter Two:** Fall, New York**

 

It’s getting colder now, and the leaves on the trees in the parks are turning bright orange-yellow-red, clashing horribly with Kate’s purple sweaters.

She’s back east again, came in on a blaze of glory in her car with her dog and her bow and arrows, and now all the furor has died down she’s staying with Teddy and Billy in the little apartment they’re sharing now, studying at two different colleges still within the city.

Kate went to Cassie’s for a few days, at first, after it looked like Clint was going to be alright, but she found it was a bit much, to stay there. A past she’d never gotten to live out, a future she wasn’t sure how to fit herself into.

Billy and Teddy are much more stable, the kind of in love that makes you hopeful for the future as much as makes you aware of your hopeless loneliness in the present.

She’s not seen America in a few months, not since back on the west coast when she woke up alone to the note on the table. She thinks about the last sentence a lot:

   _I’ll catch up with you,_

_ America _

She thinks about it at night on the sofa, and when she's on the subway, and when she’s doing Billy and Teddy’s grocery shopping for them, and how when she returns, America will smile like she’s never left, and Kate’ll stretch up to kiss her and they’ll both laugh, and America will call her princess, and she’ll stay for a while at least.

She doesn’t know when, exactly, America will come back, but she knows that she will.

 

* * *

 

In the meantime, Kate leaves Lucky with Clint on the off chance that he might be trying to get his life back together for real this time, and crashes on Billy and Teddy's sofa. She finds a job at a coffee shop a few blocks away, and spends her days forcing smiles for groups of laughing young women in their exercise clothes and stressed-looking men and women in suits, come out for coffee on their lunch breaks.

The odd scowling, self-conscious teen that comes into the shop makes her feel suddenly, powerfully glad that if nothing else, she can say she's left her adolescence far behind her, shedding the overt seriousness and awkward surety of being sixteen, seventeen, for something less certain, more willing to accept inconsistencies and change, still growing out of the awkwardness but almost definitely getting there.

She hopes Clint's alright, worries about him every other day and goes over most evenings to say hello to Lucky and sit with him on the roof with a few beers, clean out the moldier corners of his fridge. He's less absent recently, more likely to point out some cracks in the wall that look like a smiley face, or offer to go down to the archery range with her, so she thinks he'll be fine. At the very least he's less of a bruised-up shell, and more of a bruised-up person, and even the bruises aren't so frequent anymore, now the Tracksuit Draculas have been driven out for good this time.  

Taking coffee orders isn't exactly a task that puts massive strain on her mental faculties, so she has a lot of time to think about these things. And, if she's not thinking about America literally twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, she can almost convince herself that she's not missing her like hell. 

The pretense is so close to transparent it's nearly funny, but Kate likes to keep it up, for her own sake if nothing else. 

Kate's got a strip of polaroids in her pocket, her and America in a photo booth they found somewhere out in Los Angeles, a hot summer's day on one of the backstreets when they had just enough coins between them to pay for it. The classic set-up: the first photo shows the two of them smiling at the camera, and the second is of them smiling at each other. The third is of America kissing Kate on the cheek, and in the fourth it's hard to tell what's happening in all the chaos of an impromptu make out, a hand here and there, a mess of hair, the side of someone's grin. 

She makes sure she doesn't look at them too often; it's too much like poking at a bruise, and Kate's not one for hurting herself when she doesn't have to. 

 

* * *

 

It’s a tired Thursday morning, and Kate is standing on a sidewalk somewhere in the city not too far from Billy and Teddy's, a purple bright spot in a sea of busy, grey people on a cold, grey street.

She hears America before she sees her. The stomp of her boots on the pavement, then a sense of something about to happen— Kate’s gotten good at that one, over the years. It comes in handy, with the whole superhero thing.

First, a tiny glimmer of something, then America, standing larger than life against the dour crowd in her red, white and blue.

Kate stops and stares, and wonders if she’s really there. America smirks, and cocks a hip, and Kate runs to throw her arms around her neck.

America laughs and pulls her up to kiss her properly, ignoring all the scandalised looks the passersby must be giving them. When they finally break apart long enough to see each others faces, America's smiling so wide her face is all creased and her eyes look like they've disappeared into her face.

Kate strokes a hand down the side of America's neck and pushes her hair back over her shoulder, tucks a flyaway curl behind her ear. It's hard to believe she's actually standing here in the middle of New York foot traffic with her, but her skin is very warm, and Kate's not sure she could _imagine_ how it feels to be pressed body-to-body with America Chavez.

"You're here," she says, wondering, not quite thinking about it.

_Here. With me_.

"Good to see you, princess."

America leans down to kiss her, and it's a good thing she's holding Kate so tight around the waist, because Kate thinks she's so happy to see her she might actually drift off up into the sky. 

 

* * *

 

For days, maybe weeks, Kate and America walk with their hands interlocking through park avenues that look like they’re lined with fire, laughing about how Billy and Teddy are suffering with the daily separation of no more than ten miles, so they can’t walk over to see each other in their lunch breaks. 

“They should try the whole futzing universe!” Kate exclaims. “That’d show ‘em.” She spins around to face America, pulling herself in close.

She looks up, and makes sure America can see her whole face before speaking this time. “What the hell did you think you were playing at, going away like that?” 

America rolls her eyes and smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “You know how it is, princess. Things to do, people to punch.” She swings Kate around, leaves crackling and shifting under their feet. “You know I’m sorry. 

“I know,” she says. “Just don’t think you can get away with it again.”

America laughs. “I’d like to see you stop me.” She stops spinning, and pulls Kate in closer, holding her in place with warm hands on the back of her waist. Kate puts her arms up and over America’s shoulders, looks up at her and smirks.

“Oh really?” she asks, and kisses America full on the mouth.

 

* * *

 

** An Epilogue of Sorts:  **Winter, Los Angeles** **

 

Winter is grey, and dull greens. They’re back out west now, actually living in a new shitty little trailer in California, and America laughs at Kate’s wonder at the lack of snow, the year round greenery and life in the trees and grass. 

“Where I come from,” America says one night, “there’s no snow at all. The first time I saw it I was ten, and I was pretty much convinced that the world was ending.”

“There was a blizzard on the day I was born,” says Kate, by way of an answer, “I like the cold.” 

America’s still around. She hasn’t settled, not exactly, which is why they’ve moved three times already, from New York to a cabin on the edge of Lake Superior, then to Oregon, and then down the coast to California, back where they started out, but she’s still around. 

In the evenings they sit on the roof of the trailer to watch the sunset, which doesn’t always come, but it’s still nice to watch all the brightness leaching out of the day, the bright blues to grey-blues and the grey-blues to inky darkness.

America still watches the stars, sometimes still with that strange wistful look in her eye, butKate doesn’t think she’s going to go off again this time, not without her. They're together now, in every sense of the word. It’s a pleasant feeling, fits like one of America’s denim jackets thrown over her shoulders, too big, slightly unfamiliar, still somehow comforting--it's something she could get used to. 

Kate looks down at where their fingers are entwined between them, just visible in the half-light, and smiles. 

  

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i'm [here](sapphicmodernity.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you want to come chat.


End file.
